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Thursday, February 23, 2017

Although Hugh Jackman has made it very clear that Logan will be his last movie as Wolverine, he’s not above indulging in some what-ifs. He hedged his bets when asked about a potential Wolverine / Deadpool movie, and now he’s entertaining the hypothetical possibility of a Wolverine / Avengers movie. No, it’s never going to happen — but Jackman admits that he might have been tempted to stick around if it had been an option.

Although Wolverine’s hung out with the Avengers plenty of times in the comics, it’s a completely different story on the big screen. 20th Century Fox retains the rights to the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, while Marvel Studios owns most other characters from the Marvel Comics. While it’s technically possible for Marvel to strike up a sharing agreement with Fox — like they did with Sony to bring Spider-Man into the MCU — it seems very unlikely that Fox would want to. The X-Men films are still doing fine. There’s just no reason Fox would agree to overhaul the entire franchise to bring it in line with the rest of the MCU.

Still, a fan can dream. Screen Rant played the what-if game with Jackman, asking whether he’d be interested in an Avengers movie. His answer might make some of you sigh with regret:

If that was on the table when I made my decision, it certainly would have made me pause. That’s for sure. Because I always love the idea of him within that dynamic, with the Hulk obviously, with Iron Man but there’s a lot of smarter people with MBAs who can’t figure that out [laughter]. You never know.

He added, “At the moment, honestly, if I really did have them there, I probably wouldn’t have said this is the last. It just feels like this is the right time [to leave the character].” But that didn’t happen, so now not only are we never getting a Wolverine / Avengers movie, we’re never getting another Jackman-as-Wolverine movie.

Of course, it’s easy enough for Jackman to play along right now, when he’s under no obligation to make another Wolverine movie. It’s probably better, PR-wise, for him to agree that he’d like Wolverine to join the Avenger than it would be for him to shut down this line of questioning with a flat “no” — especially since it’s a safe bet no one will ever call his bluff. If I had to guess, I’d say that Jackman is probably really and truly done playing Wolverine. (And after 17 years, it’s hard to blame him for wanting to move on.) But never say never, right?